Men's hockey: Rivalry Renewed; Ravens Spoil Redmen Record Bid

That’s how long No. 5 McGill needed to keep No. 9 Carleton scoreless in Friday night's game to set a new OUA record for longest shutout sequence. If they made it to the end of the second period without allowing a goal, they’d overtake Alberta’s CIS record, set last season.

Carleton had other plans.

McGill looked poised to continue their three-game winning streak, which had propelled them to fifth in the national rankings after previously being unranked, when Cedric McNicoll opened the scoring on an early powerplay goal just two and a half minutes in.

Playing in front of a near-capacity crowd, the Ravens took over from there.

A quick even-up call put the Ravens on the powerplay, and Mitch Porowski quickly tied things up. Carleton kept the pressure up, and just over a minute later Damian Cross’ shot deflected off a defenseman’s stick and into the net to extend the lead.

By that point, Carleton had triple the shots of McGill, outshooting the Redmen 9-3. Once the no-longer historic 11:19 mark passed, Carleton had extended that shot count lead to 15-3.

Jeff Hayes added to the Ravens scoring, tapping the puck into the open net following a gorgeous cross-crease pass from Jordan Deagle. Just like that, the Redmen had allowed more goals in this game than they had in regulation in all four combined regular season games.

Unsurprisingly, head coach Kelly Nobes took a timeout to try to regroup. Out of the break, McGill was successful in stopping the bleeding.

The game became noticeably physical, with both teams looking for — and succeeding in landing — big hits all over the ice. McGill managed to get the puck on net, closing down the shooting disparity (somewhat), and were rewarded with a late goal in the last minute as Alexis Millette banged at the puck twice from the top of the crease to close the gap to a goal heading into the first intermission.

Special teams remained a key story in the second period, as Porowski netted his second of the game on a powerplay opportunity to extend the lead to 4-2. That marked the end of Andrew Flemming’s night, as he was replaced by Jacob Chouinard between the Redmen pipes after giving up four goals on 19 shots.

The two teams continued trading penalties, with each able to finally succeed in killing a penalty, before Carleton took their second trip to the box of the period on a close too many men on the ice call that made Carleton’s head coach Marty Johnson livid.

He became even less happy when McGill capitalized on the powerplay opportunity, as Millette scored his second of the game.

Less than a minute later, McGill took a skate to the penalty box – on another call that could be described as controversial – and Cross needed only six seconds on the powerplay to net his second of the game from the hashmarks and restore the two-goal lead.

Porowski completed the hat-trick in the final minute of the second frame, taking Carleton to the intermission with a surprising 6-3 lead.

McGill came out hungry in the third period, illustrated by the fact that their starting line was set-up for the face-off before Carleton had even left the dressing room.

Unfortunately, it was all for naught, as Carleton managed to withstand the intense pressure put on by the Redmen. As both teams realized the game was out of reach, things took an ugly turn in the final ten minutes as the name of the game became “run the player closest to you as hard as possible.” Tempers began to boil over, peaking when McGill’s Patrick Delisle-Houde had his stick broken on a slash while awaiting the puck to drop on a faceoff, and culminating in a double minor penalty to McGill’s Carl Gelinas for spearing Deagle, who had aggravated the Redmen all day.

Ryan McKiernan added one for the Redmen in the final four minutes, taking the final score to 6-4 in favour of the Ravens.

The win marks the third time in four games that Carleton has scored at least six goals, the others an 8-1 win over Windsor and a 6-2 victory over Nipissing.

Carleton improves to 3-1-0 following the win, while McGill falls to 3-1-1.

Updated: This week's "Game of the Week" will be Thursday's cross-Toronto matchup between 5-1-0 York and 4-1-0 Ryerson.

1 comment:

Very nice write up. I was at the game and it was very entertaining. Great pace and lots of huge hits to go along with the skill. Here is a link to a photo gallery of images that I took of the game. I shoot on behalf of the Ravens. http://www.dunnephoto.ca/galleries/03_public_hockey/16_CuRavensOct25_2013/